I have to admit to not being a big fan of the original Merge to HDR feature in previous versions of Photoshop and, although not a big user of plug-ins or additional image editing software, I did succumb to purchasing standalone HDR software – this has, however, all changed with Photoshop CS5.

Using blend modes and layers means your effect can be adjusted to suit your taste with no fear of underlying pixel destruction. And no fear of missing dinner either, since Deke explains it all in just over ten minutes. If you can’t get enough of blending with faces, lynda.com members should be sure to check out this week’s exclusive members-only video, Rendering a face as a cave painting, in Deke’s Techniques in the Online Training Library.

You can upgrade from any Suite to any Suite, as there are no more restrictions. Customers can upgrade to CS5 suites from up to 3 versions back. For example, upgrade from CS4 Web Premium to CS5 Production Premium or from CS4 Production Premium to CS5 Design Standard. Or, upgrade from Design Standard CS3 to Design Premium CS5. Customers can even step down; go from Photoshop Extended to Photoshop or from a Master Collection to another Suite.

From John Nack's blog comes news of an Adobe Photoshop CS5 Update. Here are the details:

Nothing matters more than stability and performance. I’m glad we can report that based on crash reporter statistics, Photoshop CS5 is more than 10 times as stable as CS4 (that is, it generates fewer than one-tenth as many crash reports). That’s not yet good enough progress, however. Accordingly, Adobe has released an update for Photoshop CS5.

Photoshop has always lagged behind HDR-specific software but with CS5, Adobe has boosted the HDR functionality to new heights. The HDR Pro feature allows users to merge multiple source photos and achieve a high dynamic range. What has caught our eye, however, is the HDR Toning feature. This allows you to take a single photo and apply an HDR-effect to it. Click here to download our start file.

If there is one feature of Photoshop CS5 to deliver the wow factor, it is the Content-Aware Fill option. This little stroke of genius allows you to roughly select a part of your image and then make it disappear. You can make the selection by either brushing on with the Spot Healing brush, or by making a selection and then using Edit>Fill. This is the option we are demonstrating here. It isn’t 100% accurate all of the time, but it is still enough to make your mouth fall open with surprise. Click here to download the start image.

The new content-aware fill video tutorial I just saw does a very good job of showing you how to use this amazing new Photoshop CS5 tool, and then details steps you can take to clean up any small details that may be left behind after the content-aware fill has been used.

Here is a free sample training video courtesy of Total Training from the series Adobe Photoshop CS5 Advanced. Follow along with advanced techniques and time-saving tips the pros use, including power user essentials, advanced layers, masks and selections, painting, raw file editing, working with 3D, Video and Animation, Retouching, Compositing and more.

In Photoshop CS5 New Features, author Jan Kabili introduces new features and productivity enhancements that include reshaping images with Puppet Warp, turning photographs into paintings, and Content-Aware Fill options. The course examines CS5 enhancements to existing features include significant improvements to High Dynamic Range (HDR) photo processing, selection and mask edge refinement, and lens-related photo corrections. A brief overview of companion applications, Adobe Bridge CS5 and Adobe Camera Raw 6, is included. Exercise files are included with the course. Photoshop CS5 Bristle Brush Tips Video Tutorial

Here's a video from lynda.com all about the new Bristle Brush Tips feature in Photoshop CS5. Photoshop CS5 incorporates unprecedented control over stroke characteristics of its painting tools with Bristle Tips. Bristle Qualities define key bristle properties such as shape, length, stiffness, thickness, angle, and spacing, which affect how the color is laid on the image as you paint. Click here to see the Working With Bristle Brush Tips Video, or click on the screenshot below.

Here's a video from lynda.com all about the new Mixer Brush feature in Photoshop CS5. With a new Mixer Brush, a Bristle Tips feature, and a new mechanism for blending colors, Photoshop CS5 redefines the way you paint.
The Mixer Brush lets you define multiple colors on a single tip, and then mix and blend them with the underlying hues on your canvas, achieving creative results that rival traditional painting media. When starting with a photo original, you can use a dry, empty brush to blend the existing colors while at the same time adding a painterly effect to the image.

Photoshop CS5 offers the digital artist amazing new painting capabilities in the Mixer Brush. This allows you to work as if you were using ‘real’ paints, with options to decide how the paint is applied to the canvas. However, one very exciting part of this new brush engine is that fact that it’s now far easier to paint a photo – essentially picking all the colour, detail and form from the photo and overlaying a painted effect.

This is perfect for anyone who isn’t that comfortable with painting from scratch and you don’t even need a graphics tablet. In this walkthrough we show you how to paint over a photo, using nothing more than the new brushes and a mouse for control. If you’d like to follow along, click here for our start file.

Step 1 - Colour boost Open up your photo in Photoshop CS5. It’s a good idea to add more oomph to the colours in a photo – we used the HDR Toning function to do just this.

The Photoshop Beauty Retouching Techniques DVD From Gry Garness is a visual-practical DVD guide to professional beauty and portrait retouching using flexible solutions for a variety of photo retouching jobs, from flawless magazine covers to Photoshop portrait retouching. This is an educational tool aimed at intermediate to advanced Photoshop users. It's effectively a 13 hour one-to-one with Gry Garness, an experienced trainer and London-based retoucher, demonstrating graphics tablet based professional retouching through a great variety of images, with models and non-models. It's adaptable to all types of retouching - not just favouring one particular style.

Previous editions of Photoshop CS5 For Dummies have sold more 650,000 copies. Richly illustrated in full color, this edition covers all the updates in the newest version of Photoshop, the gold standard for image-editing programs. Used by professional photographers, graphic designers, and Web designers as well as hobbyists, Photoshop has more than four million users worldwide.

In addition to learning the key elements of the Photoshop interface, this completely revised CS5 edition of Adobe Photoshop CS5 Classroom In A Book shows readers how to edit images with precise selection control, correct a wide range of lens-based errors, interactively transform their images with the new Puppet Warp tool, and easily remove or replace image elements with the new Content-Aware Fill mode. Adobe Photoshop CS5 Classroom In A Book also covers new powerful painting effects to artistically enhance images and shows how to combine multiple exposures into a single HDR image. For the first time, the companion DVD will feature, in addition to the lesson files, 2 hours of free video tutorials.

At the Peachpit Press site ysou can find a sample chapter from Adobe Photoshop CS5 Classroom In A Book that shows you how to use the Magic Wand tool. From the intro: The Magic Wand tool selects all the pixels of a particular color or color range. It’s most successful for selecting an area of similar colors surrounded by areas of very different colors. As with many of the selection tools, after you make the initial selection, you can add or subtract areas of the selection.

The Tolerance option sets the sensitivity of the Magic Wand tool. This value limits or extends the range of pixel similarity. The default tolerance value of 32 selects the color you click plus 32 lighter and 32 darker tones of that color. You may need to adjust the tolerance level up or down depending on the color ranges and variations in the image.

This one amazing feature, Content Aware Fill, will be a driving force behind sales of Photoshop CS5. Removing objects in photos is detailed and tiring work, but with Content Aware Fill it looks like simple magic. Select and delete, and all of a sudden the objects are gone, but in a way that is absolutely realistic and believable. Watch the sneak peek video from Adobe and prepare to be blown away. Wow! We're going to have to stop billing by the hour and start billing by the job. Click here to see the video.Photoshop CS5 Sneak Peek — Painting With "From Scratch" Tool And Photo Interpretation Tool

Digital painter John Derry has put together a Photoshop CS5 video that demonstrates Photoshop CS5's painting capabilities as both a "from scratch" tool and photo interpretation tool. Click here to see video.Photoshop CS5 & Photoshop CS5 Extended - Best Deals From AdobeAdobe Photoshop CS5 delivers breakthrough capabilities to help you create images with impact. Refine your
images with reengineered photography tools for removing noise, adding grain, and creating high dynamic
range (HDR) images. Get precise results when making complex selections. Remove any image element and
see the space fill in almost magically. Paint with naturally textured brushstrokes and realistic color blends. Learn more about Photoshop CS5.

Topaz Labs Photoshop plug-ins are specifically designed to expand a photographer's creative toolbox by harnessing powerful image technology developments. Photographers everywhere are now taking advantage of the creative exposure effects, artistic simplification, unique edge manipulation, and top-of-the-line noise reduction offered in Topaz products. The Topaz Photoshop Plugins Bundle is a super powerful Photoshop plugins package that includes the following Topaz products: Topaz Adjust
Deliver stunning and dynamic images with this uniquely powerful plug-in that features HDR-like abilities and enhances exposure, color and detail.Topaz Detail
A three-level detail adjustment plug-in that specializes in micro-contrast enhancements and sharpening with no artifacts.Topaz ReMask
The fastest and most effective masking and extraction program with one-click mask refining.Topaz DeNoise
Highest-quality noise reduction plug-in that removes the most noise and color noise while preserving the most image detail.Topaz Simplify
Provides creative simplification, art effects, and line accentuation for easy one-of-a-kind art.Topaz Clean
Take control of the detail depth of your images with extensive smoothing, texture control and edge enhancement tools.Topaz DeJPEG
Drastically improves the quality of web images and other compressed photos.

OnOne’s new Plug-In Suite solves six of the most frequent problems photographers will encounter in Photoshop. This suite has been granted American Photos Magazine’s Editor’s Choice award for Top Image Editing Software. The Plugin Suite includes:

Genuine Fractals Pro is renowned by both photographers and printers for its finesse at increasing images to more than ten times their original size while maintaining the sharpness and detail you started with. Think of this as the industry standard for image resizing.

Mask Pro is used to remove the tough stuff — such as hair, smoke and glass — while retaining the fine detail. You choose what colors to keep, then paint away what you don’t need.

PhotoFrame Pro lets you enhance your pictures with hundreds of such design effects, or simply drop your image into a pre-fab layout in Photoshop, Lightroom or Aperture.

FocalPoint helps to control focus and minimize visual noise. Draw the eye to specific points in your images by using selective focus, depth-of-field and vignette effects.

PhotoTune lets you can compare images side-by-side and easily color correct and enhance them. PhotoTune optimizes the dynamic range, color and sharpness of your image without the need to know all the complicated controls in Photoshop like levels and curves.

Nik Software Color Efex Pro filters are the leading photographic filters for digital photography. The award-winning Color Efex Pro filters are widely used by many of today's professional photographers around the world to save time and get professional level results. Whether you choose the Complete Edition, Select Edition, or Standard Edition, you’ll get traditional and stylizing filters that offer virtually endless possibilities to enhance and transform images quickly and easily.

Patented U Point technology provides the ultimate control to selectively apply enhancements without the need for any complicated masks, layers or selections. Control color, light and tonality in your images and create unique enhancements with professional results. With 52 filters and over 250 effects found in Color Efex Pro, you can perform high quality retouching, color correction, and endless creative enhancements to your photographs. Download a free Trial version.

VivezaThe most powerful tool to selectively control color and light in photographic images without the need for complicated selections or layer masks.

Two of the most important factors in creating great photography are color and light. Mastering the art of selectively correcting or enhancing each of these is now possible for every photographer without the need for complicated masks or selections, or expert-level knowledge of Photoshop. Integrating award-winning U Point technology, Viveza is the most powerful and precise tool available to control light and color in photographic images.

U Point powered Color Control Points, placed directly on colors or objects in an image (such as sky, skin, grass, etc.), reveal easy-to-use controls that photographers can use to quickly adjust brightness, contrast or color in a fraction of the time needed by other tools. With Viveza you’ll spend more time shooting photographs and save hours of image editing. Download a free Trial version.

Silver Efex ProComplete power and control to create professional quality black and white images in one convenient tool.

Silver Efex Pro from Nik Software is the most powerful tool for creating professional quality black and white images from your photographs. For the first time, all the advanced power and control required for professional results have been brought together in one convenient tool.

Featuring Nik Software’s patented U Point technology to selectively control the tonality and contrast of the image, Silver Efex Pro includes advanced imaging algorithms to protect against unwanted artifacts, a comprehensive collection of emulated black and white film types, a variable toning selector for adding traditional toning techniques, over 20 one-click preset styles, and a state-of-the-art grain reproduction engine that help produce the highest quality black and white images possible from your color images while providing more freedom to experiment. Download a free Trial version to use Silver Efex Pro.

The 4 1/2 out of 5 star review of Fluid Mask at MacWorld begins by saying that this "Photoshop plug-in takes the pain out of extracting backgrounds," and goes on to recommend the latest version, stating that "Fluid Mask is a very effective tool for separating objects from their backgrounds. It offers a variety of useful features for tackling almost any difficult image, from wispy hair to complex foliage. Online video tutorials and live training sessions help ease the learning curve."

Fluid Mask is designed for photographers, image editors, graphic designers and all those who take digital image editing seriously. In a streamlined interface and workflow, Fluid Mask instantly shows key edges in the image and provides comprehensive easy to use tools that work with difficult-to-see edges and tricky areas like trees & lattices. Fluid Mask will also preserve all-important edge information for a professional quality cut out. Go to our Fluid Mask page for more info.lynda.com Online Training Library - View Free Video Clips

For less than a dollar a day, members have the opportunity to stay current and keep skills sharp, learn innovative and productive techniques, and gain confidence and marketability - all at their own pace.Premium subscriptions include instructors’ exercise files so that members can follow along with the exact examples onscreen. Customers learn at their own pace and may stop, rewind, and replay segments as often as necessary. View some free video clips (high resolution).Did You Know You Could Create An Entire Website In Photoshop?
SiteGrinder Photoshop Plugin - Create Websites InstantlyThere often seems to be a strict division of labor within the world of web design and development. Creative professionals tend to stick to the Photoshop domain, while those well-versed in scripting are left to the task of implementing their work. Indeed, the two realms are quite different from each other, to which any of us even vaguely familiar with either can easily attest.

Essentially, Photoshop is a no-holds-barred design studio, offering the artist a seemingly endless array of creative options. On the other hand, HTML, CSS, Java and the like follow strict rules of engagement, requiring the developer to take any number of esoteric concerns into consideration in order to ensure that designs are properly displayed on the web.

Turn Photoshop Into A Complete Web Design ToolSiteGrinder seeks to bridge this gap between design and development. Basically, SiteGrinder turns Photoshop into an easy-to-use and fully functional web design tool. With SiteGrinder, designers will now have the freedom to totally let their creativity loose and then, without skipping a beat, transfer their designs to the web. Bringing esthetic concerns together with more practical considerations, SiteGrinder is an amazingly powerful tool that would make a fantastic addition to any web designer's bag of tricks. Mac OS X and Windows versions of the SiteGrinder unlockable demo are available now via download. Photoshop CS4 Essential Skills - By Mark Galer And Philip AndrewsBrimming with beautiful pictures, Photoshop CS4 Essential Skills guides you through a project-based, progressive curriculum so that you can build all the essential skills to enhance photographs creatively and professionally with Photoshop CS4. If you are an aspiring professional or a student learning photography, digital imaging, or design graphics, you'll be amazed at the stunning results you can achieve. A DVD is included free.

The Essential Skills Photography Series from Focal Press uniquely offers a structured learning experience for photographers of all ages, with both the underlying theory and loads of invaluable 'how to' and real-life practice projects - all from the most talented photography practitioners/educators in the world.

The Photoshop Blog offers the latest Photoshop and Digital Photography news and software updates, tips and tutorials, and random thoughts from graphic artist, digital photographer and Photoshop expert Jennifer Apple. Also includes Photoshop CS3 news!PHOTO CREDIT: Full moon as seen from the International Space Station.